Monday, January 08, 2018

EFF
– “Across the country, private companies are deploying vehicles
mounted with automated
license plate readers (ALPRs) to drive up and down streets to
document the travel patterns of everyday drivers. These systems take
photos of every license plate they see, tag them with time and
location, and upload them to a central database. These companies—who
are essentially data brokers that scrape information from our
vehicles—sell this information to lenders, insurance companies, and
debt collectors. They also sell this information to law enforcement,
including U.S. Department of Homeland security, which recently
released its
updated policy for leveraging commercial ALPR data for
immigration enforcement. The Atlantic has called this collection of
our license plates “an
unprecedented threat to privacy.” This data, collected in
aggregate, can reveal intimate details about our lives, including
what doctors we visit, where we worship, where we take our kids to
school, and where we sleep at night. Companies marketing this data
claim that the technology can predict our movements and link us to
our associates based on which vehicles are often parked next to each
other…”

See also the Washington
Post – “Beijing bets on facial recognition in a big drive for
total surveillance… It will use facial recognition and artificial
intelligence to analyze and understand the mountain of incoming video
evidence; to track suspects, spot suspicious behaviors and even
predict crime; to coordinate the work of emergency services; and to
monitor the comings and goings of the country’s 1.4 billion people,
official documents and security
industry reports show.”

Governments don’t do technology very well.
Perhaps my students could create an Emergency App?

With 70 percent of all 911 calls made nationally
on cell phones, 2News wanted to know how well your location can be
tracked in a life-or-death situations.

… Apps like Pokemon-Go and Uber can track your
every move, because you have accepted the terms and conditions of
their operating system. Your acceptance gives your permission to be
tracked to your exact GPS location. Emergency dispatchers don't have
that luxury, and instead rely on cell towers from the major carriers
and what is called triangulation. If the triangulation system works,
the longer you are on the phone, the closer and closer the cell
towers can pinpoint your location as they relay information between
towers nearest to where your call was made.

It’s not the current level of sharing, it’s
the direction this is going. I’ve highlighted the hackable bits.

More and more companies are
trying to sell you cameras to put outside the house. Now one of them
is wondering: why not share their footage with neighbors, so more
people can monitor what’s going on?

That’s the idea behind
Streety, a new app from the security provider Vivint. People with
Vivint security systems will be able to share footage from their
outdoor cameras with neighbors, who will be able to tune into them
live and post messages for others. They can also place requests to
view recorded footage in case, say, they’re trying to figure out
who dinged their car a couple hours ago.

Vivint is only
activating the feature for outdoor cameras — not indoor
ones — and the sharing has
a range limit: 300 yards, or about one-sixth of a mile.
That isn’t very far, which could really restrict the feature’s
usefulness. In a denser neighborhood, that might cover a lot of
ground; but in a more spacious suburb, it might only cover a few
houses in any direction. That wouldn’t help if you’re hoping to
tap into a camera down the street to see what your kid is up to.

Gosh! What the coincidence. (As a Director, I
would like to know what is going on here.)

Four years after hijackers showed driver’s
licenses to board planes used in the 2001 terrorist attacks, Congress
passed the “Real ID” Act to force states to exert greater
oversight of the primary identification Americans use when they fly
domestically.

Now, after 13 years of delays and extensions, the
Trump administration has fixed a hard deadline of October for states
to comply. Under the law, all airline travelers must display a new,
technologically advanced license if they wish to board a plane. But
privacy advocates warn that the program, with its requirement of data
and photo sharing between states and the federal government, carries
with it some Orwellian implications.

The Department of Homeland Security has given the
23 states still operating under extensions until Oct. 10.

CRS report via FAS – Membership
of the 115th Congress: A Profile. Jennifer E. Manning, Senior
Research Librarian, January 3, 2018: “This report presents a
profile of the membership of the 115th Congress (2017-2018) as of
January 3, 2018. Statistical information is included on selected
characteristics of Members, including data on party affiliation,
average age, occupation, education, length of congressional service,
religious affiliation, gender, ethnicity, foreign births, and
military service. In the House of Representatives, there are 241
Republicans (including 1 Delegate and the Resident Commissioner of
Puerto Rico), 197 Democrats (including 4 Delegates), and 3 vacant
seats. The Senate has 51 Republicans, 47 Democrats, and 2
Independents, who both caucus with the Democrats.”

Military
Service Records, Awards, and Unit Histories: A Guide to Locating
Source

CRS report via FAS – Military
Service Records, Awards, and Unit Histories: A Guide to Locating
Sources. Nese F. DeBruyne, Senior Research Librarian; Barbara
Salazar Torreon, Senior Research Librarian. January 2, 2018. “This
guide provides information on locating military unit histories and
individual service records of discharged, retired, and deceased
military personnel. It also provides information on locating and
replacing military awards and medals. Included is contact
information for military history, websites for additional sources of
research, and a bibliography of other publications, including related
CRS reports.”

“Anywhere.link
is a one-click video conference solution. After signing up for an
Anywhere.link account, users can create a video conference. The
system provides a url to join the conference that can be sent to up
to six participants. Recipients of this link need only click it to
join the video conference – they will not need to create an
account, nor will they need to download or install any additional
software. Anywhere.link also supports screen sharing for
presentations, software demos, remote technical support, and so on.
It provides a ‘website widget’ that site owners can use to enable
one-click video calls from their home page. Anywhere.link’s free
tier allows five team members, each of whom can receive ten ‘website
widget’ calls per month and can create an unlimited number of video
conferences. Anywhere.link currently supports Google Chrome, Mozilla
Firefox, and Opera, with work ongoing to add support for other
browsers. Companion mobile phone apps for iOS and Android are
currently in beta.”

Links

About Me

I live in Centennial Colorado. (I'm not actually 100 years old., but I hope to be some day.) I'm an independant computer consultant, specializing in solving problems that traditional IT personnel tend to have difficulty with... That includes everything from inventorying hardware & software, to converting systems & data, to training end-users. I particularly enjoy taking on projects that IT has attempted several times before with no success. I also teach at two local Universities: everything from Introduction to Microcomputers through Business Continuity and Security Management. My background includes IT Audit, Computer Security, and a variety of unique IT projects.